Drug Lord: The Book

"The drug smuggling business goes on, the slaughtered dead pile up, the U.S. agencies continue to ratchet up their budgets, the prisons grow larger and all the real rules of the game are in this book, some kind of masterpiece." -- Charles Bowden

Category: Breaking News

A group of unknown gunmen stormed a Mexican elementary school’s Christmas pageant and executed a veteran journalist watching his son’s performance.

The murder took place at the Aguirre Cinta elementary school in the southern city of Acayucan, Veracruz, Revista Proceso reported. Longtime journalist Gumaro Perez Aguilando had gone to the school to see his son’s Christmas pageant when a team of gunmen walked up to him and opened fire in front of other parents and students.

Perez Aguilando covered the crime beat at various local news outlets and was a key editor of La Voz Del Sur. He was physically assaulted in 2012 for gathering information at a courthouse, Proceso reported.

Aguilando’s murder is the to 83rd strike the Mexican press, where more than 12 have been murdered in 2017 alone. The International Press Institute has labeled Mexico as the most dangerous place for journalists worldwide edging out Iraq and Syria.

As Breitbart Texas has reported, the murder of journalists in Mexico carries no real consequences. While human rights activists and journalists have previously called out the Mexican government for its inaction in addressing crimes against reporters and for the lacking security conditions, the usual promises made by the Mexican federal government appear to not have been kept. In many cases, violent drug cartels, or at times, corrupt public officials are the suspects behind most of the attacks.

A press freedom organization has ranked Mexico as the deadliest country for journalists, overtaking Iraq and Syria for the highest number of reporters who lost their lives while practicing their craft. On the day the report was published, gunmen murdered another journalist in Mexico.

A new report by the International Press Institute labels Mexico as the most dangerous place for journalists, citing the government’s lacking efforts to protect them.

The murder of journalists is “an attack on the fundamental human right to share and receive information and on democracy itself,” IPI Executive Director Barbara Trionfi said.

According to the IPI, since 2006, when the country started a new security strategy to fight drug cartels, 79 journalists have been murdered. In 2017, there were 13 that IPI accounted for with four targeted directly for their work. On the day the report was published, a team of gunmen murdered Gumaro Perez Aguilando as he attended his son’s Christmas Festival in Veracruz.

According to IPI, none of the recorded cases have been solved. As Breitbart Texas reported in 2017, cartel gunmen targeted various journalists including Miroslava Breach, an investigative reporter from Chihuahua, who uncovered deep connections between key members of the Juarez Cartel and local politicians.

Also in 2017, cartel gunmen murdered respected journalist Javier Valdez from Culiacan, Sinaloa. The slain journalist founded the news outlet Rio Doce and covered cartel violence for several years.

(BREITBART) — Mexico’s Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) continues spreading bloodshed and death threats after gunmen left two human heads outside of the Televisa TV station in Guadalajara, Jalisco.

A Mexican federal law enforcement source confirmed to Breitbart Texas that the gunmen left ice chests with human remains in various parts of Jalisco.

While the case left in front of the TV station did not contain any cartel threats against reporters, Mexican authorities suspect the group is looking to get attention for recent violent acts after they threatened a local police chief close to the governor and a local judge. The chest left at the TV station contained two human heads.

“Jesus Humberto Boruel Neri, number 1202, here I leave you these heads, let’s see if you go public, not like on Sunday 19-11-17 when we threw grenades and you hid it,” one of the recovered messages said. “You know that deals have to be kept or do you want us to remind you why you are there and who put you there.”

Law enforcement sources revealed to Breitbart Texas that Boruel is one of the top leaders of the state police, and at one time, was the bodyguard of current Governor Aristoteles Sandoval. During his time as a bodyguard, Boruel was arrested for his alleged role in the murder of a man in Tlaquepaque, but was later released for a lack of evidence. In another part of the city, authorities found another ice chest with a message for a local judge: “[expletive] Judge Molina, you are next.”

(BREITBART) — REYNOSA, Tamaulipas — The raging cartel violence in this border city resulted in 60 murders in November.

Rival factions of the Gulf Cartel continue their fight for control of drug trafficking territories and access to Texas. The 60 victims include military and police officers killed in shootouts as well as innocent civilians killed in the crossfire.

Breitbart Texas has been tracking the murders and executions that have been taking place in Reynosa since early May. At that time, two rival factions of the Gulf Cartel went to war for territorial control. Since May, the violence has left more than 324 victims. The fighting followed the death of former regional leader Juan Manuel “Toro” Loiza Salinas, a ruthless cartel boss who terrorized Reynosa for almost two years until he was gunned down by Mexican Marines.

After El Toro’s death, another Gulf Cartel commander named Petronilo “Panilo” Moreno Flores claimed control of the city. However, a faction claiming to be relatives and followers of the late leader led by Luis Alberto “Pelochas” Blanco Flores and Toro’s nephew Humberto “Betillo” Loza Mendez, who also went by the name of Alberto Salinas, have been fighting against Panilo’s forces.

The fighting resulted in fierce gun battles where convoys of gunmen clash along the city’s main avenues, those firefights have killed not only gunmen but also police officers and military personnel tasked with keeping the peace. The firefights also led to various innocent bystanders being killed or wounded by stray bullets.

The fighting between cartel forces also manifested itself in a dramatic increase in kidnappings and executions. As Breitbart’s Texas has reported, cartel gunmen have resorted to incinerating the bodies of their victims as well as to using shallow pits to dump the bodies of their rivals.

The most recent casualty took place on Friday early morning when a State police officer died in a gun battle. A squad of state cops was responding to a call of help from military forces who had been battling a team of gunmen. Two cartel gunmen also died during that clash in the Jarachinas Sur neighborhood.

The murder rate in the Mexican border city of Tijuana spiked with a record-breaking number of murders. The number of murders climbed as drug cartels battle over control of key drug trafficking routes and the control of the lucrative street-level drug distribution business in the region. The escalating violence in the large border city can be attributed primarily to the hostilities between the Sinaloa Cartel and their one-time ally, Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG).

In recent days, the number of murders in Tijuana for the year surpassed 1,500 after the city saw six murders in a seven-hour period, local news outlets reported.

The murder victims included one man who was shot inside a home. Two other men who were also wounded but survived the attack. In a separate case, three different victims were left throughout the city — all showing similar methods of torture and murder. The victims had all been shot in the head, had their hands and feet tied, and were wrapped in blankets. The last murder dealt with the discovery of a severed human leg. That victim’s body has yet to be found.

The escalating number of murders in Tijuana surpassed 1,500 well before the end of the year. This reveals a dramatic spike when compared to the previous record-setting year in 2016 when only 910 were recorded. According to the San Diego Tribune, the 2016 figure had been alarming at the time since it had broken the 2008 record of 844 murders.

As the cartel-fueled turf-wars continue to rage, the spike in murders places Tijuana as one of the leading cities in homicides for 2017. According to Frontera.Info, the spike in murders is fueled by the turf wars between cartel-connected gangs who handle the street level distribution of drugs. Another reason behind the spike in violence deals with Tijuana being one of the main drug trafficking areas that fuel the U.S. drug market in California. The city also serves as a hub for distribution into other major cities throughout the nation.

One may support or oppose the Trump administration’s grand design in terms of home security: the building, or the “updating,” of a 3200-kilometer barrier between the United States and Mexico. One cannot deny, however, that such structures — hermetic and heavily monitored separations, instead of merely classic borders — are quite common today.

While the Iron Curtain and Bamboo Curtain separating the USSR and Red China from the rest of the world were partially dismantled, some other 20th century barriers are still extant. And new ones are being erected all over the world at steady pace.

Le Point, a French right-of-center weekly, has published a comprehensive map in this respect. According to it, and other documents, the oldest existing barriers are the outcome of wars of aggression:

The “demilitarized zone” (DMZ) between North and South Korea — in fact, one of the most militarized fences in the world — was created in 1953 as part of the armistice agreement that ended a three-year war initiated by the Communist North Korean regime. The 180-kilometer long Attila that separates the Muslim-Turkish populated Northern Cyprus from the Christian-Greek populated southern Republic of Cyprus was unilaterally set up by Turkey after it invaded the Mediterranean island in 1975. The Sand Wall, a 2720-kilometer barrier put in place between 1980 and 1987 and manned by 100,000 Moroccan soldiers, marked Morocco’s 1975 unilateral annexation of the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara.

Likewise, the 120-kilometer fence on the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese borders and the 51-kilometer fence on the Israeli-Gazan line were set up in the wake of repeated aggressions by Arab states or terrorist organizations against the Jewish State from 1948 to 2014. The almost 3000-kilometer fence on the Indian-Pakistani border is the result of the many wars and skirmishes involving the two South Asian nations since 1947:

However, the more recent barriers were built or are being built within a very different context. Their main purpose is to prevent large-scale terrorist infiltrations or to monitor mass migrations.

The largest of them are to be found in the Islamic world. This should not come as a surprise, since many Islamic countries are hotbeds of competing jihadist movements or migratory pools or both.

There is a 3300-kilometer wall between secular but Hindu-dominated India and Muslim Bangladesh. Some 2700 kilometers of walls surround Uzbekistan, 1400 kilometers lie on Saudi Arabia’s borders, 1200 kilometers on Iran’s Eastern borders, and 700 kilometers on Oman’s borders. Jordan is completing a 500-kilometer fence on its Syrian and Iraqi borders; Tunisia a 200-kilometer fence along its Libyan border.

Israel, a Jewish islet in the Muslim ocean, operates some 550 kilometers of barriers in the West Bank and on its Jordanian and Egyptian borders in addition to its aforementioned military fences. Much smaller walls are to be found as well in the same area: Egypt built 11 kilometers on its Gaza border, and a combined 11.81 kilometers of fence separate the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla from Morocco.

(BREITBART) — MORELIA, Michoacan — Mexican authorities appear powerless to stop the cartel violence that continues to rage in one southern state. The fighting between rival criminal organizations left 20 people dead in a single day.

The executions on Friday followed a week of gun battles that continue spreading terror in this state located west of Mexico City. Despite the large-scale gun battles, state authorities continue ignoring the violence. The government has yet to issue any security alerts.

As our elected officials in Washington D.C. continue to debate whether or not Trump’s proposed border wall would be an effective deterrent to those looking to come to the U.S. illegally, the one thing that is becoming increasingly clear is that Mexico’s drug wars are spiraling out of control…a fact that the Trump administration will almost certainly leverage as it seeks additional funding for border security.

As PanAmPost notes, Mexico has recorded a staggering 24,000 homicides in 2017 through September with 73% of those murders being tied to organized crime.

2017 might be the most violent year in Mexican history, one NGO claims. Semáforo Delictivo said that, due to the 24,000 homicides between January and September, the year is proving even worse than 2011, when President Felipe Calderón’s war on drugs led to 22,000 homicides.

President of the organization, Santiago Roel, said that 73 percent of murders committed in the first eight months of the year were related to organized crime. He said that in 2007, there were 2,828 executions. Now, a decade later, 18,017 have been reported.

All high-impact crimes have increased during the current year, including abductions, homicides and grand theft auto at gunpoint. According to Roel, the main cause of violence and corruption is the “Mérida Plan,” which focuses on eradicating drug cartels.

Moreover, some 85,000 insured vehicles have been stolen over the past 12 months, with 60% being considered ‘violent’.

According to the Mexican Association of Insurance Institutions, violent car robberies are at their highest point in the country’s history. Between October 2016 and September 2017, 85,943 insured cars have been stolen. Sixty percent of the robberies were violent.

Recaredo Arias, the association’s Director General, said that elements of organized crime have been identified in these cases, and that more urgent measures are needed to combat the problem.

The states of Guerrero, Sinaloa, Mexico City, Tlaxcala, Puebla, Michoacán, Zacatecas, Morelos, Tabasco and Tamaulipas, have the highest numbers of violent car thefts, he said.

Meanwhile, as Fox News pointed out earlier this week, the drug wars south of the border are seemingly on the precipice of becoming way more sophisticated after 4 men were arrested by federal police carrying a drone equipped with an improvised explosive device wired for remote detonation.

Mexican Federal Police arrested four men Oct. 20 in Guanajuanto who were driving a stolen vehicle equipped with a 3DR Solo Quadcopter drone attached to an IED, Small Wars Journal reported. The drone had a range of about half a mile, but modifications would have allowed it to fly farther.